that the Greeks took the name of Heracles from the Egyptians, rather than vice versa (2.43.2). After her death, Zeus had Alcmene transported to the Islands of the Blessed where she married Rhadamanthys (see e.g., Pherecydes BNJ 3 F84). She may have received cult honors at Boeotian THEBES (Paus. 9.16.7).
SEE ALSO: Myth; Proof
FURTHER READING
1 Fowler, Robert L. 2013. Early Greek Mythography. Vol. 2, Commentary, 342–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2 Trendall, Arthur Dale. 1981. “Alkmene.” In LIMC I.1, 552–56.
ALCON ( Ἄλκων, ὁ)
CHRISTOPHER BARON
University of Notre Dame
Alcon, a Molossian, appears as one of the thirteen men who came to SICYON as a suitor for Cleisthenes’ daughter AGARISTE (I), sometime in the sixth century BCE (6.127.4). Nothing more is known of him, nor does Herodotus provide a patronymic.
SEE ALSO: Cleisthenes of Sicyon; Competition; Hippocleides; Megacles (II); Molossians
FURTHER READING
1 Hornblower, Simon. 2014. “Agariste’s Suitors. An Olympic Note.” In Patterns of the Past. Epitēdeumata in the Greek Tradition, edited by Alfonso Moreno and Rosalind Thomas, 217–32. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2 Papakonstantinou, Zinon. 2010. “Agariste’s Suitors: Sport, Feasting and Elite Politics in Sixth‐Century Greece.” Nikephoros 23: 71–93.
ALEA , see ATHENA; TEGEA
ALEIAN PLAIN (τὸ Ἀλήιον πεδίον)
ALISON LANSKI
University of Notre Dame
A large plain in CILICIA between the Sarus and Pyramus rivers, east of Tarsus (BA 66 G3; Müller II, 93–95). In Greek MYTH, Bellerophon famously wandered this plain (Hom. Il. 6.201). Historically it was an important military crossroads and staging point: the army of DARIUS I assembles at the Aleian Plain in 490 BCE before embarking for the AEGEAN SEA (6.95).
SEE ALSO: Armies; Marathon
FURTHER READING
1 Scott, Lionel. 2005. Historical Commentary on Herodotus Book 6, 340. Leiden: Brill.
ALEUADAE (Ἀλευάδαι, οἱ)
EMILY VARTO
Dalhousie University
The “sons of Aleuas,” an elite Thessalian FAMILY named for a legendary founder figure Aleuas, who was selected as king of THESSALY by the PYTHIA (Plut. De frat. amor. 492a–b); powerful in LARISSA as politicians and legendary founders of the Thessalian state (Hellanicus BNJ 4 F52; Arist. Pol. 5.6). In Pythian 10, PINDAR is called upon by the sons of Aleuas to PRAISE a Thessalian victor (Pyth. 10.5), who presumably belonged to the family. The ode was commissioned by THORAX, member of the Aleuadae, and praises him and his unnamed brothers for their good governance of the Thessalian state (Pyth. 10.64–72). These are seemingly the same brothers—Thorax, EURYPYLUS, and THRASYDEIUS—named by Herodotus (9.58) as the Aleuadae who surrendered Thessaly to the Persians and made an alliance with XERXES in 480 BCE (cf. 7.6, 130, 172; 9.1). In this, Herodotus puts the Aleuadae on par with other Medizing elite families like the PEISISTRATIDAE at ATHENS (7.6), who welcomed the Persian invasion. In the Histories, Xerxes assumes the alliance with the Aleuadae represents FRIENDSHIP with Thessaly as a whole (7.130); however, Herodotus later recounts that the Thessalians, maneuvering against the Aleuadae’s alliance with PERSIA, send their own embassies to the Greeks in advance of Xerxes’ invasion (7.172), implying that the Aleuadae could not force Thessaly as a whole to cooperate with Persia. According to Herodotus, Thorax accompanied Xerxes back to ASIA on his retreat from Greece and continued to press MARDONIUS to invade again (9.1).
SEE ALSO: Allies; Athletes and Athletic Games; Medize
FURTHER READING
1 Helly, Bruno. 1995. L’état thessalien. Aleuas le Roux, les tétrades et les tagoi. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient Méditerranéen.
2 Stamatopoulou, Maria. 2007. “Thessalian Aristocracy and Society in the Age of Epinikian.” In Pindar’s Poetry, Patrons and Festivals: From Archaic Greece to the Roman Empire, edited by Simon Hornblower and Catherine Morgan, 309–41. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ALEXANDER I (Ἀλέξανδρος, ὁ) son of Amyntas
IOANNIS XYDOPOULOS
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Son of Amyntas, king of MACEDONIA (c. 497/6–454 BCE). Alexander is the only Macedonian king to play a role in Herodotus’ narrative of the PERSIAN WARS, but he makes an impressive entry earlier (5.17–21). There, Herodotus describes how Alexander deceived and killed the seven Persian envoys who had demanded and received EARTH AND WATER (i.e., formal submission to the Great King of PERSIA) from his father Amyntas, probably in 513/12. As king of Macedonia, Alexander appears on five other occasions in the Histories, four of them connected with Herodotus’ narrative of 480–479. i) At TEMPE (7.173.3) he tried to warn the Greek forces that resistance to the vast Persian army would be useless. ii) He saved the Boeotian CITIES from destruction, by placing garrisons and persuading XERXES that the BOEOTIANS were loyal to Persia (8.34). iii) He appears in ATHENS (8.136.1–3, 140.α.1–β.4) as an envoy of MARDONIUS, since he was already a PROXENOS and euergetēs (benefactor) of the Athenians, to try to convince them to become ALLIES of Persia. iv) He reveals Persian plans about the forthcoming attack at PLATAEA to the Athenian generals on the eve of the battle (9.44–45). Finally, as a coda to his initial appearance (5.22), Herodotus also describes how Alexander advanced his Greek descent from the Argive Temenids as an argument for his competing in the Olympic Games; the final verdict of the HELLENODIKAI was in Alexander’s favor.
Thus Herodotus presents Alexander as a philhellene (friend of the Greeks) and at the same time of Hellenic descent. The story of the MURDER of the Persian envoys, which casts Alexander as an enemy of the Persians from a young age, is a later invention; otherwise, it is hard to explain the Persians’ subsequent treatment of Alexander, such as Mardonius choosing him as an envoy to Athens, or other sources’ claim that Xerxes rewarded Alexander generously by allowing him to rule the region between Mt. OLYMPUS and Mt. HAEMUS (Just. Epit. 7.4.1). Alexander’s participation in the games at OLYMPIA has also been questioned, and the lineage he presents (going back to HERACLES) must be an attempt by the Macedonian royals to bind their land with the rest of the Greek world. Some scholars have seen in these two incidents, as well as the speech at Plataea, Herodotus uncritically accepting these (deliberately false) stories he heard on a visit to Macedonia. But in that case, how can one explain Alexander’s impressive DEDICATION of a golden statue at DELPHI, right next to the TRIPOD dedicated by the other Hellenes (8.121.2), in the first flush of victory against the Persians? This action of Alexander, which was cited until the age of Demosthenes (8.24),
